Author of UVA Rape Story: 'What Exactly Happened? I Don't Know.'

Yesterday, I reported that Rolling Stone's bombshell story about a gang rape at the University of Virginia was drawing some skeptical appraisals, most notably from writer Richard Bradley. I wrote that while I had no reason to distrust Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the author of the Rolling Stone piece, I shared some of Bradley's concerns about the plausibility of the narrative.

But perhaps the most serious question about the accuracy of the story is one inadvertently raised by Erdely herself, at the prompting of Slate's Hanna Rosin, several days ago. Erdely was interviewed by Rosin's Double X podcast; when pressed for crucial details about whether she knew the perpetrators names and sought their sides of the story, Erdely repeatedly dodged the question. Eventually, she conceded this: "What exactly happened? I wasn't in that room. I don't know."

On Tuesday evening, Rosin wrote a polite but critical response to Erdely in which she essentially said, that's not good enough. As she—and Slate colleague Allison Benedikt—note, there were supposedly seven other people in that room, and Erdely didn't make much of an effort to contact them. Some important parts (emphasis mine):

It could be that Erdely did try her hardest to reach the alleged rapists. Or it could be that she didn't, out of deference to Jackie. We've interviewed many of Jackie's friends, including some who were quoted in the Rolling Stone story. They verified that Jackie did get very upset when Erdely wanted to find out more about the alleged assailants. Sara Surface, a good friend of Jackie's and a member of One Less, a victim advocacy group at UVA, had the impression that Jackie's reaction was "extreme" when Erdely pressed her—meaning that Jackie became so terrified that she reconsidered going public with her story, even anonymously. If that's true, then Erdely was in a tough position. Push too hard and she might lose Jackie. But not pushing harder has created a whole new nightmare.

Various writers and media outlets have now started to pick apart Erdely's reporting, as well as the details of Jackie's story as reported by Rolling Stone. That's because, even by the standards of horrific, despicable frat behavior, this story stands out. Jackie, who says she was sober, was allegedly led upstairs by her date into a dark room, where seven men allegedly raped her as others egged them on. She tells Erdely that she was smashed into a glass coffee table and raped by a beer bottle. Drew, who had invited her to the frat party as his date, allegedly stood by and orchestrated the whole thing. When he later ran into Jackie, she says that he told her he'd had a "great time." That's not expected behavior even by the standards of rapists. That's psychotic.

Rosin and Benedikt mention that they found out who Jackie is, contacted her, and arranged an interview, only to have Jackie back out as the public's skepticism of the story began to increase. An interview between Jackie and The Washington Post is apparently forthcoming.

I reached out to Erdely and her editor, Sean Woods, today; I had questions about the efforts undertaken to speak with the perpetrators. Neither responded. Instead, I was forwarded a statement by Rolling Stone spokesperson Melissa Bruno. It's the same one that other journalists seeking comments from either party are receiving at this point, but here it is, nonetheless:

In response to your questions about Sabrina Rubin Erdely's "A Rape on Campus": The story we published was one woman's account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 – and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact–checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves.

Based on what Erdely has said, and what Woods told The New Republic previously, it seems like Rolling Stone was positive that the rapists existed. But they only made successful efforts to reach the fraternity, not the individuals—even though contacting the individuals is as easy as typing a name into Facebook's search menu or UVA's student directory, presuming one knows the actual names.

Rosin and Benedikt did speak with some of Jackie's "supporters" on campus; what's striking is that none of these people know the identities of the attackers, either:

What became clear from talking to Jackie's supporters at UVA is that the community of victim advocates operates by a very specific code. "The first thing as a friend we must say is, 'I believe you and I am here to listen,' " says Brian Head, president of UVA's all-male sexual assault peer education group One in Four. Head and others believe that questioning a victim is a form of betrayal, because it will make her feel judged and all the more reluctant to ever speak about what happened. None of the people we spoke to had asked Jackie who the men were, and in fact none of them had any idea. They did not press her on any details about the incident.

This undermines a claim, made by Erdely to Rosin during the podcast, that "people [on campus] seem to know who [the perpetrators] are."

So we know that Erdely never spoke to the alleged perpetrators. She hasn't suggested that she made an effort to contact them individually at all. We know that Jackie balked at the idea of giving up "more" information about them. And we know that Rosin and Benedikt couldn't find anyone who knew who they were.

At this point, I'm skeptical that anyone other than Jackie knows their names. To utterly clear up the confusion, my most pressing question to Erdely was whether she learned the perpetrators' identities. In return, I was forwarded Bruno's statement.

Erdely told Rosin that "there's no doubt in my mind that something happened to her that night." That's more easily proven; as The Post's Erik Wemple noted, sources who were actually named in the article did testify that something happened to Jackie that night. But something is a far cry from the extreme horror story that ran under Erdely's byline.

Lastly, I should mention that I have fielded criticisms all day from people—some of them libertarian-leaning—who think it was wrong of me to write a story questioning a rape accusation at all. Some believe that by expressing skepticism of Erdely's reporting, I risked identifying libertarianism with rape denial. Needless to say, I disagree; anyone who gives my previous work a fair appraisal should conclude that I treat sexual assault with the utmost seriousness. Whatever the extent of the campus rape crisis, I am interested in exploring potential solutions, and believe I have pinpointed a major one.

Still, I must go on reporting the news as it actually happens, not the version of it that is most convenient for making libertarianism more palatable to the social justice crowd.

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Lastly, I should mention that I have fielded criticisms all day from people?some of them libertarian-leaning?who think it was wrong of me to write a story questioning a rape accusation at all. Some believe that by expressing skepticism of Erdely’s reporting, I risked identifying libertarianism with rape denial. Needless to say, I disagree; anyone who gives my previous work a fair appraisal should conclude that I treat sexual assault with the utmost seriousness. Whatever the extent of the campus rape crisis, I am interested in exploring potential solutions, and believe I have pinpointed a major one.

Robby, you really need to go out and just kick the shit out of your critics on this one. You reported reasonable concerns about inconsistencies and outright impossibilities in Rolling Stones account, linked to similar concerns from a former magazine editor, and did all of this in a completely reasonable tone that no one but a madman could have had any problem with.

For your trouble, you were called an idiot, criticized for the grand sin of skepticism (which I always thought was an important part of journalism), and were then told you’re too stupid to talk about these things by a semi-literate moron who thinks she’s better than you because of a Columbia degree which is so useless the best it could get her was a job at Jezebel.

You should be gleefully consuming Anna Merlan’s heart and spitting on her corpse.

Merlan also wrote in the comments that she’d gladly eat crow if the story turned out to be false. What are the odds that ever happens? One in a million?

I bet something did happen to this girl, she got embarrassed and made up a ridiculous story. How could she not go to the hospital? Who picked the glass out of her back? Who picked the glass out of the rapists’ balls?

If it did happen as she said, lots of people need to go to jail, including UVA administrators.

If she’s as damaged as I suspect she is then I really don’t blame her since the real villains are the feminists and social justice warriors that are blatantly ignoring the truth for the good of their cause.

How horrific is it that a literally incredible account like the one Rolling Stone published can’t be critically examined without screams of “RAPE DENIAL!!!!” being levied against those that dare question the narrative?

It’s becoming mainstream and they want that to become a valid part of the legal system too.

I’m usually hesitant to declare that opponents of mine are acting like a religion because I feel that it’s a tired slur which everyone uses against their political opponents in order to claim they can’t think rationally.

However, in the case of modern feminists, I just don’t know what else to call it. They have virtually everything in common with an organized religion:

1. Unfalsifiable beliefs that must be believed by all adherents or else charges of heresy shall follow. Rape culture is an argument with no evidence on its behalf whatsoever, but feminists believe it anyway, it is as unfalsifiable as the Holy Spirit, and any who doubt it is a blasphemer.

2. A cargo cult tendency to co-opt actual scientific terminology and reasoning for your own purposes. Feminist discourse is littered with pseudo-scientific arguments and all the trappings of academia, but feminist ‘intellectuals’ are not held to any sort of standard, consistently get basic facts wrong (such as the one feminist who Christian Hoff Somers mocked for believing that Romulus of Rome was a real person), and use a dense sort of academese to obscure their arguments. This reminds me of creationists who started claiming to be in favor of ‘intelligent design’ because it sounded more scientific.

3. Any criticism of specific aspects of the faith is evidence of blasphemy and worth of scorn. In this case they call people rape apologists instead of heretics, but it’s basically the same.

Even worse. Adherents to these sorts of secular faiths lack even the self-awareness to realize that they’re religious zealots. They’re convinced that believers in traditional faiths are all slackjawed morons. They’re smart and know stuff, so they’re obviously immune.

It’s possible that something happened. It’s also possible that it is a complete hoax a la balloon boy. It’s also possible that Jackie truly believes something happened the same way that Hinkley believed Jody Foster wanted Reagan in a box. What seems unlikely bordering on impossible is that the story is accurate.

If she’s as damaged as I suspect she is then I really don’t blame her since the real villains are the feminists and social justice warriors that are blatantly ignoring the truth for the good of their cause.

I’ve found that these SJWs and feminists are keen on manufacturing rape allegations. First of all they’re moral utilitarians and so if they think ruining one guy’s life with false accusations will benefit their cause, they’ll do it without a second thought. Thus they constantly work to expand the definition of rape.

A friend of mine is in prison because he threw up on his date during consensual sex. The girl was grossed out and days later told her “women’s studies” ‘professor’ who then convinced the girl that she was raped because it got icky and the guy slept in her bed when she wanted him to leave.

Rosin and Benedikt mention that they found out who Jackie is, contacted her, and arranged an interview, only to have Jackie back out as the public’s skepticism of the story began to increase. An interview between Jackie and The Washington Post is apparently forthcoming.

Want to know what’s great about a story like this? You can make wild accusations that are physically impossible (such as the claim that you were raped on top of broken glass) and then when questioned you can back out of interviews with the ready made excuse that rape is incredibly traumatic and that the skepticism has inflamed your PTSD.

If Jackie was raped, and it is tremendously tragic if she was and has had this story marred by shoddy journalism, then it simply cannot be in the manner Rolling Stone described. Either Jackie does not recall exactly what happened (which would call into question a host of other claims she made), Jackie is lying, or the Rolling Stone author embellished to the extent that the described assault and university response is no longer recognizable.

And here’s the thing: If there was a rape but the university’s response was not as is described, then the primary argument of the piece falls apart. This was not just a piece about a rape, it was a bit of activist journalism meant to change what the reporter saw as a diseased culture. If the facts are not as described, and there is no diseased culture, the central thesis is a lie even if a rape happened.

They found out about someone called Jackie, but since Jackie didn’t show up to the interview she could very well be a fabrication. This could be a lie being perpetrated by some feminists to get some sort of action they want enacted. They invented the whole thing about an imaginary girl and now they’re being called to account for it.

Thanks for the skepticism, Robby, and thanks for not toning things down because people think that asking questions is mean

In the unlikely scenario that this actually happened (hey, anything’s possible), the perpetrators should be put under the jail. But that requires evidence. And in the absence of that, in the absence of a single thing that could lead to evidence, and in the belief that “Jackie” doesn’t even exist, a journalist wouldn’t be doing their job if they didn’t question things here.

Yet another Dreyfus Affair. Once again. Ho hum. Religious nutters defending the moral equivalent of the truth. When reality is not enough, the fiction that affirms the faith becomes the higher reality. Apologetics in defense of a True Faith. A malicious symbiotic gaggle of hysterics and sociopaths.

This would be another Dreyfus Affair if some Paris newspaper ran an article recounting how an employee of the French War Ministry was kidnapped by a group of masked Jews took him into a dark room and forced him into a pitch-dark room and tortured him into revealing military secrets so they could pass them on to the Germans, and this article was then trumpeted around as proof of the need for radical restructuring of the French military, including the dismissal of all Jews from the officer corps and a declaration of war on Germany to recover Alsace-Lorraine.

Make that: “how an employee of the French War Ministry was kidnapped by a group of masked Jews who took him into a dark room and forced him into a pitch-dark room and tortured him into revealing military secrets”

The problem with the current hysteria is that it DOESN’T treat sexual assault seriously. It treats it like a three ring circus, with clowns on all sides and dancing chickens in every corner.

Duke Lacrosse case; a woman with a record of possibly not firing on all cylinders brings rape charges against a group that just happens to be perfect for a Liberal Left wide Two Minute Hate. The case is full of discrepancies, and the prosecutor violates basic procedure every time he turns around. Yet the Professoriat falls for the hoax like a ton of bricks, and are STILL justifying themselves. I thought these people were supposed to be smart.

The Daycare Witch Hunts; seriously; the amount of NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET drivel that was presented in court as serious testimony is revolting. What aren’t the people who railroaded the accused in prison. Or dangling from gibbets?

The Rape Culture (?) nonsense; how do the idiots who are pushing this crap believe that gutting the rights of the accused can possibly be a good thing overall?

Want fewer rapes? Maintain a vigorous standard of evidence, prosecute any prosecutor who even THINKS about pulling a Nifong, and make it easy for young women to arm themselves.

And whatever you do, don’t become hysterical at the mere mention of the word “Rape”.

The daycare witch hunts have always haunted me. In the fantastic frontline pieces they played an interview with the jurors who convicted one of the owners and sent him packing for life without parole.

The reporter asked of each of the allegations: “Do you believe that this happened?”

Each time the answer was no. Nobody believed any of the allegations. Not a single one.

“So why did you vote to convict?” he asked. “Because there was just so many allegations we felt like there had to be something there and we felt we had to protect the children.”

A world where people will seriously take away your freedom and possibly even your life even when they know that none of the allegations against you have been proven is simply terrifying. Like “oh, that probably explains Nazi Germany” terrifying.

The history of the human race is littered with the lessons of hysteria pretending to be concern for some moral, metaphysical or philosophical cause yet we continue to be surprised when it appears in another guise.

Milgram says:

Please continue. The experiment requires that you continue. It is absolutely essential that you continue. You have no other choice, you must go on.

Richard Bradley goes after the Jezebel piece and absolutely drops the mic:

Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly said Richard Bradley is retired. In fact, he is the current editor-in-chief of Worth. I regret the error. This is what a professional journalistic correction looks like, in the unlikely event that any editors at Worth or writers at Reason [a writer there also questioned the Rolling Stone story] ever need to issue one.

This is ripe. According to her LinkedIn page, Anna Merlan is a 2010 graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism who has also worked at the Dallas Observer, the Village Voice and now Jezebel?a downward trajectory, you might say, but never mind.

This gives her about four years of professional journalism experience?more if you count her pre-Columbia days?as opposed to my 30 years.

I’m not a big one on harrumphing about kids today and all that, and I’m all for young journalists stirring the pot, but still?how kind of Merlan to identify for me what a “professional journalistic correction looks like”?in an addendum that is exactly not what a professional correction looks like. I’m guessing that using a correction to take a shot at the person you’re making a correction about is not what they taught at CSJ. It certainly isn’t what I taught at CSJ, where I was a tutor in the master’s program for two years. (Merlan and I just missed overlapping.)

Jezebel, like most feminist sites, is a totalitarian hug box, filled with social cripples, it’s silly to think you’d get any sort of rational debate out of them. They’re the pseudo-intellectualization of the cookie dough the fat girl eats when she can’t get a date on Saturday night.

“An interview between Jackie and The Washington Post is apparently forthcoming.”

I am curious – if this issue has been handed over to police by now, as i’ve heard it has – whether or not the Jackie character has given statements to police, a deposition, or what.

If she has a lawyer (and i’d think its well past the point where you’d expect her to have gotten one), you’d think that counsel would be running a pretty tight ship here aiming to ensure she doesn’t either blow her case up by discrediting herself.

I’d also sure think if there are some even quasi-implicated frat dudes out there… they’d see the pitchforks and torches massing, that they’d be climbing over each other to rat out their neighbors and find some way to avoid being crucified en masse with the actual culprits.

I mean, after a week of national coverage? … you’d think a few Dads (and their lawyers) would have gotten the panicked phone call by now.

Robby – you seem to have taken a shellacking, but kudos maintaining your poise.

Indeed. This isn’t ‘someone walked on my lawn!’ If rape is as serious as the writer claims to see it, she needs to get her butt in gear and start delivering some meat. Sorry, ‘I don’t want to think about it’ ain’t gonna do it.

If she has a lawyer (and i’d think its well past the point where you’d expect her to have gotten one), you’d think that counsel would be running a pretty tight ship here aiming to ensure she doesn’t either blow her case up by discrediting herself.

How many years has it been since the—alleged—assault? She may no longer have a criminal case, if the SoL has lapsed. Civil case may be in play though, and yeah, trial by newspaper article generally doesn’t work. (You save those revelations for the pleadings…)

I agree, Robby is handling this extremely well. I can’t remember another Reason writer having to go to the mat this much for one of their articles recently. Maybe Sullum or whoever was involved with “he-who-should-not-be-named?”

I’d also sure think if there are some even quasi-implicated frat dudes out there… they’d see the pitchforks and torches massing, that they’d be climbing over each other to rat out their neighbors and find some way to avoid being crucified en masse with the actual culprits.

This touches on another area that draws my skepticism. If you have a fraternity full of the kind of sociopaths who would engage in gang rape as an initiation ceremony, wouldn’t you expect that these guys would get caught doing other things? And if so, I think it’s safe to say ratting out the fraternity would be a good way to cop a plea. You have to assume that either the only evil thing these guys do is rape freshmen or that they are complete imbeciles.

1. No Phi Psi brother worked at the Aquatic Fitness Center pool as a lifeguard during the entire year of 2012. No brother even worked at the Aquatic Fitness Center at all. They can prove this.

2. Phi Psi did not have a date function the weekend of September 28th. They did not even have a party. UVA Greek life is required to document any and all social events with the IFC in the week leading up to them. Phi Psi has this schedule available and the IFC can also show that there were no events at the house that weekend.

Anyone know about this? If these two claims are true then that is a serious blow to Jackie’s credibility.

I am fairly certain the first claim is false as a CLAS ’14 Phi Psi brother with a extensive swimming background and an apparent job at the Aquatic center has already been identified online. That individual, who no longer lives in Charlottesville, has taken down all social media sites. Second claim, no clue.

That’s because, even by the standards of horrific, despicable frat behavior, this story stands out. Jackie, who says she was sober, was allegedly led upstairs by her date into a dark room, where seven men allegedly raped her as others egged them on

The fuck? That’s been the story the entire time?! Two things:

1. If that actually happened there would be extensive medical evidence of it, certainly enough that would warrant hospitalization due to the lacerations.

2. How do you tell that story and not name names when it’s clear that psychopaths are living on campus and preying on other women?

Barring something like demon possession, men who would act exactly the way described in the account would not limit themselves to one victim. There ought to be more women coming out to corroborate this like with the Bill Cosby scandal if it’s even close to being that bad.

As Irish said above, either she has serious mental health issues and doesn’t know the actual truth, she’s lying, or the SJW writer for Rolling Stone pulled a Stephen Glass and made the whole thing up or greatly exaggerated it.

In any case, this is kind of unsupported hearsay that should be strictly and thoroughly examined before anything close to legal or administrative action is taken that impacts thousands of people.

Of course those two things are true, which is why no SJW liar has even attempted to dispute them. I’ll add a third — this supposedly was part of an “initiation”, when the initiations happen in the spring, not the fall.

Of course the biggest red flag is the claim that _seven_ UVA (practically Ivy League) students would act out this pure evil in concert, _and_ it would somehow not get out.

Or claim that it has, either by being a victim or by being some machismo braggart? Not a ONE? No one, except this gal with more holes in her story than a block of Swiss? “Journalist Gerd Heidemann claimed to have received the diaries from East Germany,”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler_Diaries

But don’t you see that it is “possible” – just like Jesus coming back and launching the apocalypse tomorrow is possible – and as we all know the very, very faintest possibility of something happening is proof positive that it did.

Actually, I take Saturdays off, but I do direct my orphans to think about it constantly as a backup measure. It’s a pleasant diversion to the monotony of monocle polishing. I like to think of it as a benefit.

There was a poster or two in one of the previous articles on this here, who brought up that the glass is probably the one thing that is true, whether the glass was tempered or not. He then explained it as her tripping over said glass item and cutting herself.

I feel bad for Jackie in this. I don’t know what happened, but it may have been something bad, and because she didn’t report this, or preserve evidence, very little is going to happen to whoever abused her. If indeed anyone did.

It’s what happens when feminists promote this whole “rape stigma” BS. I know not a soul that would fault a rape victim for her ordeal, but that doesn’t stop feminists from scaring their rank and file into thinking that they’re going to be judged, mocked, and scorned if they report a rape.

I just wanted to leave my 2 cents for what it is worth. For people skeptical about the glass situation, my sister and I got in a fight when I was ten and she pushed me through a glass coffee table in our living room. We rolled around for a bit fighting until my mother came in and broke us up, it is worth noting that I had a few cuts and scraps on my hands and arm but she had no abrasions at all. It seems amazing that I didn’t need stitches but truthfully two band aids fixed me up. I know this is all anecdotal but I feel since this has happened to me I am not seeing the glass as an incredulous part of the story. What I don’t understand is why this girl would make all of this up, personally I am of the mind that the girl was raped and the story was embellished to fit the reporters agenda. I knew a few girls who were raped on campus when I was in grad school, I encouraged them to talk to the real cops but they were so despondent and just wanted to move on with their lives. It is a horrible thing to witness a friend go through this and if this story is true or even if it is embellished I feel for her.

The fact that you cannot imagine something does not stop it from being so. Moreover, what’s more likely: That one girl lied or had her story manipulated by a Rolling Stone reporter or that literally dozens of people at the University of Virginia decided a gang rape didn’t matter and that the girl should just suck it up?

The girl making this up is actually way less crazy than the idea that the people in this story acted as described.

I know why some men rape: because they want to, and because they think they can get away with it.

What I don’t understand is how eight guys possessing the intelligence to get admitted to UVA imagined that they could engage in a brutal pre-meditated group rape without one of them later getting careless or drunk and blabbing about the experience to just the wrong person, in such a way as to bring the whole group down and facing potentially decades of hard time.

For people skeptical about the glass situation, my sister and I got in a fight when I was ten and she pushed me through a glass coffee table in our living room. We rolled around for a bit fighting until my mother came in and broke us up, it is worth noting that I had a few cuts and scraps on my hands and arm but she had no abrasions at all. It seems amazing that I didn’t need stitches but truthfully two band aids fixed me up

That might be true but this whole ordeal allegedly lasted 3 hours and involved being beaten and raped by a glass bottle.

I just don’t see how that does not require hospitalization or at the very least leave scars in certain areas.

In any case, I agree that she must have suffered some trauma and at this point is being taken for a ride by a media desperate for a juicy, scandalous story to feed the narrative about colleges being hotbeds of rape and injustice.

I understand what you’re saying, but the glass aspect isn’t the only part.

1. The rape allegedly lasted three hours, during which time she was viciously beaten.

2. You, being presumably a normal, decent human being and not a sociopath, told your friends to go to the cops. They chose not to. In this story, THREE FRIENDS of the girl told her to suck it up because they didn’t want to ruin the possibility of getting invited to future frat parties. Later, other friends told her she was being boring because she was still upset about her gang rape. Unless everyone at Virginia is a borderline serial killer, this is simply not possible.

3. There was allegedly a gang rape used as an initiation into a fraternity. In other words, it was a premeditated gang rape in which some of the co-conspirators agreed to commit a major felony with people they just met two months earlier. One of the people mentioned in the story was explicitly said to be a freshman and the rape was in October. Do you really think anyone would agree to commit gang rape with someone they didn’t know two months earlier?

…”I knew a few girls who were raped on campus when I was in grad school, I encouraged them to talk to the real cops but they were so despondent and just wanted to move on with their lives.”…

Not to beat on you, but I have a hard time imagining this. Rape is serious business. If I were accused of it, I’d fight back with everything I could muster; forcing sex on someone is despicable. Conversely, someone who was raped ought to get to the cops right now; the rapist should be punished! And now I have to ask a very important question: Those girls? Did they, well, maybe decide it wasn’t a good idea the next morning, maybe? Or maybe…? If so, I’m calling bullshit.

I appreciate your comments and your perspective. You are probably correct in several important respects. Rape happens. It’s monstrous. I’m pretty sure one UVA freshman was raped and murdered this year. As a husband, son, brother, and father, I want rapists jailed and/or executed. The problem with embellishment & exaggeration of facts is that it creates a snowball effect. Exaggerations pile on exaggerations. This leads idiots to justify stupid, immoral policy solutions based on exaggerated, embellished statistics, saying, “I admit that [insert policy] may sound draconian, but major magazine stories establish that, today, 20% of all co-eds will be gang raped & violated with beer bottles. Prosecuting just a few, isolated, factually-substantiated cases is not enough! We cannot stand idly by…etc etc”

For the same reason people would issue death threats to themselves or fake attacks from racists. It advances their ideological agenda. In this case, the story has launched a national controversy on the topic of rape. And the only reason its controversy, rather than universal condemnation of the “rapists” is that it has been discussed outside of academia. It doesn’t take much for me to imagine that young feminist in college in college might easily expect that the story would be taken at face value, no questions asked.

Sympathy, social standing in the anti rape crowd, protection of her own psyche, avoidance of having to admit to something she is ashamed of, mental illness, or any of a host of other reasons.

Not saying she wasn’t raped, or even gang raped but there are a lot of elements of this story that don’t add up.

Here is one possible explaination however, if we assume that something bad happened to her at that frat (raped or at least sexually abused pretty badly by 1 guy) and her friends were as dismissive of her plight as they are portrayed then she reaches out to the campus rape prevention groups and here are people who uncritically accept anything she says and tells her exactly what she needs and wants to hear and the more outrageous the claims the more sympathy and support she gets, well she has a very strong psychological incentive to embellish and keep embellishing and before she knows it people are looking up to her as a leader in the group partly as a result of how horrible her ordeal was so how can she correct that misinformation now? Her only choice is to keep making up elements of the story to keep the lie going. Possibly to the point where she believes the non factual story she is telling.

Jackie should have gone to the cops, or better yet, re-enacted the second half of I Spit On Your Grave. I have no idea what happened to her based on the “True Confessions” fictional piece Ms Erdely wrote for Rolling Stone.

I really didn’t want to weigh in on this other than the pull-quote I usually comment on the story with but IF I WAS A JOURNALIST I’d probably do a thorough survey of the existing “literature” on college gang rapes as I am very sure the author of the published story did before she finalized her draft.

And this isn’t the much more believable kind of date rape where the woman was drunk and the guy came onto her anyway despite her meek protests.

No, this is the kind of behavior you read about in accounts of the Imperial Japanese or Red Army in World War II. If there are really people like that walking around a college campus you are morally obligated to press until you identify them.

Journalism be damned, if someone tells me that happened to them and I truly believe them I’m getting the cops involved.

These folks live in a bubble. They never encounter people who might question their claims of rape, because in their circle, that simply isn’t done. As a result, their bullshit detectors (for their own bullshit) are broken. In their world, if someone told them a bunch of frat boys rode in on flying cerberi and time traveled them to 15th century Transylvania where they raped them while they were impaled by Vlad Dracula, they’d believe it. It’s what’s done.

Yes. Thing is that the “One Less” is a support group, so it’s their JOB to not be critical. It’s an inherent failing of support groups.

I doubt Jackie would be the first person with mental problems who went to a rape support group specifically for the group therapy, and made up a fake story so that she would be accepted. (*ahem* Fight Club).

Maybe she waited a long time before telling her story so she had to make it extra bad.

My two cents: from my time living in a college town, I’d heard of the “running a train” thing in fraternity initiations. But in every instance I heard about, it was complicit. That’s not to say that it isn’t disturbing or that the girl never regrets it, but that’s a far cry from rape. My theory is that, at most, this was a case of regret. Which I completely sympathize with, but that doesn’t excuse lying.

But the whole radical feminist approach to rape and sexual consent is a disservice to everyone, equally. At least they’re consistent.

It makes perfect sense if you understand contemporary feminism as merely a means for privileged white women to act out and demand society absolve them of the burden of responsibility for their life choices.

I’ve seen a train. I didn’t want to, but it happened while I was there. This was in Palm Springs when I was a young adult, though, and the focus of said train initiated it herself.

UVA is one of the best public universities in the country. I went to the best public university in the country, and joined the most animal house-ish fraternity there, which has since been kicked off campus. And I can say that “running a train” as part of an initiation is a complete unicorn. It only exists in folklore.

For perspective, my fraternity burned our fucking house down while I was there, and it was no surprise. But there was never even a whisper of sexual assault.

FWIW, and going by Hunter Thompson’s book about the Hell’s Angels, a train started consensually by the eventual victim, easily can turn into rape. Something Tom Wolfe, for all his other journalistic and literary gifts, saw fit to white-wash. Maybe it was the suit?

Indeed, maybe it was something like that, where she agreed to one, maybe two, which turned into seven. I won’t say things like were described in the RS article don’t exist. In my area, we had a very nasty (statutory) rape case, where the 11 year old victim, was taken to a location, and raped by as many as twenty guys. With video, which is how they were eventually caught. I don’t know how willing she was—at 11, it doesn’t matter—but I think there was more than a little compulsion in the act. Especially since she was taken there more than once.

The story was published and publicized in support of Social Justice. Therefore I don’t know why people insist on applying standards of accuracy and integrity to it. They’re quite irrelevant. #StandUp2Privelege!

MikeConrad|12.3.14 @ 12:29AM|# “The story was published and publicized in support of Social Justice. Therefore I don’t know why people insist on applying standards of accuracy and integrity to it. They’re quite irrelevant.”

I was actually told by someone on Reddit, when arguing that there is no factual or credible basis for these claims, that “that’s not how journalism works”.

I wouldn’t even care except people in power have already given these ridiculous claims credence and taken action due to them. I just don’t understand how that is possible. It is like we now live in some Bizzaro World where truth is totally inconsequential.

Maybe it has always been that way and I’m now just waking up to it but I don’t think so.

To be fair, I don’t think that characteristic is particularly unique to Fox or MSNBC. The legacy media did much the same for a long time. But, they produced bullshit that was consistent between sources, so it looked more credible.

“What a great rebuttal.” What a pathetic admission from someone supposedly dedicated to writing facts. That comment should be printed on the pink slip she’s handed on the way out the door. But of course, since she doesn’t write for Fox or some other non-lefty org, she’ll get a bonus!

There are also a host of other absurdities in the Rolling Stone piece which no one mentions because they’re only the 15th or 16th most unbelievable part.

Here’s a claim about Jackie and her friends being assaulted with bottles by a man who recognized Jackie from a time she gave a speech about rape:

“This past spring, in separate incidents, both Emily Renda and Jackie were harassed outside bars on the Corner by men who recognized them from presentations? One flung a bottle at Jackie that broke on the side of her face, leaving a blood-red bruise around her eye.”

Jackie is apparently impervious to the effects of shattering glass. She rolls around in a bed of glass for three hours without hospitalization, then someone breaks a fucking bottle in her face and all it does is leave a bruise. Whatever superpower Jackie has, humanity needs it.

Oh, then two more girls were gang raped by the same men in the same frathouse. Except this was over the course of a few years, so there were probably some new pledges involved. That means there were three girls viciously gang raped, God knows how many friends of these girls who knew about it, and probably 11 or 12 different men from the same frat involved in the commission of a major felony.

Someone here did mention that tempered glass shatters into glass pebbles that are not sharp. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but it should be easy enough to verify if it’s actually an important thing to know.

For me, since the entire incident is obviously made up, it’s not important.

And Sabrina Rubin “Sharpton” will ride to new heights, arriving for paid appearances and NEVER ONCE admitting she is a goddam sucker who printed lies! No, it wasn’t Churchill, but that woman’s lies are well in advance of the truth.

I think asking whether a crime happened or not that night to this person misses the point. The larger issue is whether the tenets of journalism were met. Or should have been (we are talking about Rolling Stone, here. Oh, hey, another woman is naked on the cover this month!)

If they should have been, and weren’t, then that’s where the focus should lie. Because despite being a silly magazine which runs stories of questionable journalistic integrity with regularity, it somehow still carries a lot of weight. And all that protects a university, frat, or person from a hatchet job that ruins a reputation or a life are those tenets.

Preaching to the choir! We have Ehrlich writing that India is not salvageable as a country by 1985 or so. We have Mann telling us that NYC is going to need boarded-up windows by (what is the goal post now?) 2020. How about Reagan closing the mentally-disabled hospitals to keep from taxing the rich? I could go on, but this pile of stinking shit will join the pantheon of lefty lies and be repeated for who knows how long?

This story reeks of Pulitzer Bait, and while the focus on Erdely is justified and important, Sean Woods is the editor who gave the ultimate imprimatur for the story to be published. He needs to be held to account as much as, if not more than, Erdely. It’s his job to guide his journalist to get the story correct, and to refrain from publishing it until it is. If this turns out to be a hoax — and it is so fantastical that it almost has to be on some level — both Erdely and Woods should be toxic in the media industry.

This alleged incident does have one thing common with the Brown tragedy – and that is just how much the activists and protesters WANT to believe the narrative, no matter how incredulous and outlandish it is. We’re supposed to believe that half the women in colleges get sexually assaulted and that a racist cop executed a black teen who was surrendering without ever laying hand on the cop.

They want lies to be true, because it confirms their preconceived bias about society, and gives them a cause to swell up into a movement. So if a noose was found hung on a tree, it’s time to cancel classes, hold protests in solidarity, and bring in the counselors, before any of the facts are known.

The left lives in a perpetual state of grievance against some sort of establishment, and they relish any opportunity to stage what passes in their mind as some sort of “revolution” or “empowerment.”

Why are they so upset when anyone questions allegation of rape? Because doing that disrupts the binary opposition that’s set like stone in their minds – that the victims are women, non white, poor, and lacks a voice, whereas the rapists are powerful, male, white, and protected by powerful interests.

The sad thing to me is why anyone would take anything written by a Jezzie seriously. It should all just be assumed fiction because they all live in a fictional world they made up. It’s like their religion. These are like Bible stories to them. The fact that they are not true is irrelevant. The purpose isn’t to report, it’s to reinforce faith in their false worldview.

Maybe we can start founding universities that are totally dedicated to rape culture. There will be no men on the campuses but all the women will claim to be raped all of the time. Hey, I know, they can buy rape robots!

We have to get the Japanese right on that. There will be different genres of rape robots. Some of them will just be ‘cat call’ robots. They will just stand around at key locations on campus and say things like ‘hey baby, I really dig your manly looking face, bad hair style, flabby thighs, and bad attitude. Want to come up to my dorm room? You look like you need a good rapin!’.

The interesting thing about their [Rolling Stone, writer] backpedal in the claim that the story was about UVA administrators’ poor handling of the situation and not about the underlying incident. If so, why push the accuser into naming the fraternity? Why open that can of worms at all? Why not briefly make the unspecific and qualified assertions and then focus on the university’s response?

I think they live in such a bubble that they thought at this point in the campus rape hysteria that they could get away with less than rigorous journalism on this topic and be able to shriek any pushback away. They’ve done considerable harm to their own cause.

Right. They go out of their way to conceal the names of all the actors — including the “rapists” — but come right out and name the frat? Why, if the story is really about the university sweeping such claims under the carpet, and not the incident that sets it up?

I think it’s possible that one of the purposes of this piece was to be a targeted attack against this specific frat.

“In response to your questions about Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus”: The story we published was one woman’s account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 ? and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact?checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves”

In other words, Rolling Stone was surprised that people, instead of focusing on the real issue (to them) of how the UVA administration treated the accuser. instead want to know who the hell all these rapists are running around a campus committing gang rapes. No, that’s not the point. That’s crazy talk.

Instead we should all just get people to understand that rape is serious.

And BTW, F U to anybody who doesn’t want this to be discussed because it could give libertarianism a bad name. It’s that kind of cowardice that has allowed so many false accusations to thrive over the years. The truth is the truth. That’s all there is to it.

And BTW, F U to anybody who doesn’t want this to be discussed because it could give libertarianism a bad name. It’s that kind of cowardice that has allowed so many false accusations to thrive over the years. The truth is the truth. That’s all there is to it.

“In response to your questions about Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s “A Rape on Campus”: The story we published was one woman’s account of a sexual assault at a UVA fraternity in October 2012 ? and the subsequent ordeal she experienced at the hands of University administrators in her attempts to work her way through the trauma of that evening. The indifference with which her complaint was met was, we discovered, sadly consistent with the experience of many other UVA women who have tried to report such assaults. Through our extensive reporting and fact?checking, we found Jackie to be entirely credible and courageous and we are proud to have given her disturbing story the attention it deserves”

In other words, Rolling Stone was surprised that people, instead of focusing on the real issue (to them) of how the UVA administration treated the accuser. instead want to know who the hell all these rapists are running around a campus committing gang rapes. No, that’s not the point. That’s crazy talk.

Instead we should all just get people to understand that rape is serious.

And BTW, F U to anybody who doesn’t want this to be discussed because it could give libertarianism a bad name. It’s that kind of cowardice that has allowed so many false accusations to thrive over the years. The truth is the truth. That’s all there is to it.

Everyone knows that rape victims often have a hard time going public about the disgusting humiliation they have been put through. Being a skeptical reporter and wanting facts checked is one thing; spewing vitriol for a likely rape victim and misogynist namecalling is beneath the dignity of a Reason.com comment section.

And BTW, F U to anybody who doesn’t want this to be discussed because it could give libertarianism a bad name. It’s that kind of cowardice that has allowed so many false accusations to thrive over the years. The truth is the truth. That’s all there is to it.

The story is just a step beneath “abducted by aliens and raped by anal probe” in credibility.

If she was date raped by one guy who came onto her when drunk I could absolutely believe that, 7 guys as part of a frat initiation ritual at a party for 3 hours and not a single perp identified stretches the limits of credibility for any story.

It does stretch the imagination, but true things stretching the imagination is not that uncommon, if you think about it. It only takes the right environment for the majority of people to be capable of unbelievable things, as has been explored by social psychology, a la the Milgram experiment, the frequency of popular support for genocide, etc. I’m waiting for developments because I can tolerate uncertainty. If it’s true, I expect someone to out the men soon.

Capable of going about their lives like nothing ever happened for 2 years as your victim starts running around campus speaking publicly about what you did to her and knowning that at least some of your fellow students will be able to put 2 and 2 together and conclude that you are in fact a violent sociopath and rapist?

Or the dozens to hundreds of students who DO put 2 and 2 together and do precisely nothing about it.

I should note, You are massively over estimating the average guys willingness to participate in group sex with a willing girl forget gang rape an unwilling one.

I have been to an after hours swingers party at a club that had about 400 people, around 150 of which were University of Louisville college students . At that party there was a girl who wanted to be subject of a gang bang. She got exactly 0 men to sign up and agree to fuck her in front of a bunch of strangers, there were literally party organizers going around trying to shame 20 something guys into signing up for the gang bang with no success.

Now, this does not mean that a gang rape by a frat is impossible but the idea that none of those guys has had a break down and reported what he did to a therapist (who has a duty to report to the cops) by this point is basically 0

I don’t know which comments you’re referring to, but it should be noted that 1) not everyone who comments here is a regular, and 2) there are all sorts of trolls who come here and post things as if they’re regulars.

The same thing happens in stories about racism. There will be a number of trolls that post racist remarks in those thread–and a number of libertarians who denounce them for it.

In regards to, “the dignity of a Reason.com comment section”…are you kidding?! We have some pretty awesome threads, sometimes, in which we learn a lot from and argue well between ourselves, but those threads have always happened despite the trolls.

We have a troll that comes back regularly, like herpes, and calls himself “Palin’s Buttplug”–talk about being beneath the dignity of the Reason.com comment section!

Everyone knows that rape victims often have a hard time going public about the disgusting humiliation they have been put through.

Yet this alleged rape victim did go public, just in a way where her alleged rapists get no justice served.

spewing vitriol for a likely rape victim and misogynist namecalling is beneath the dignity of a Reason.com comment section.

Vitriol? I see very little directed to Jackie. Most of it is pointed at the “journalists” who let this thing publish without due diligence being done.

Likely rape victim? We have zero evidence and a quite implausible story related by an anonymous victim unwilling to name her alleged attackers.

I’m pretty sure the main points coming out of this comment section are * this story needs more evidence to be validated * the journalists were not working within their professional standards when writing and publishing this story * if this girl is telling the truth, then many people need to go to jail;however, if she’s lying, it imputes a level of guilt on the entire feminist hype machine driving this story.

Everyone also knows that the Duke lacrosse team had their lives ruined because an overly credulous media bought a ridiculous story.

They just burned down half of Ferguson for similar reasons.

Maybe fact-checking before smearing innocent people is more important than the very unfortunate fact many rapes go unreported (especially a huge majority of those happening to men in prison which the media almost totally ignores).

(especially a huge majority of those happening to men in prison which the media almost totally ignores).

And it’s not that the media merely ignores it, but our culture practically celebrates it. Any story on yahoo or whatever that you read about a criminal being apprehended is littered with comments about “Can’t wait til he meets his cellmate Bubba!”

Not much vitriol here actually. FMF, if you read Reason regularly you’ll read an ongoing poking fun at everyone, including between regulars. Not vitriol. There are some trolls who post things that most of us would not agree with, and they will be shot down instantly, but….what can you do? It is the internet and trolls abound.

Rape is a crime, report it to the police not your college dean. The police should investigate it, not a college. If you file a false police report you should go to jail. If you’re raped your rapist should go to jail. The standard of evidence should be intent to rape beyond a reasonable doubt. Period.

“Still, I must go on reporting the news as it actually happens, not the version of it that is most convenient for making libertarianism more palatable to the social justice crowd.”

If only the social justice crowd took making their case palatable to people with libertarian concerns half as seriously!

I suppose falling for a monkey fishing* story is the risk they take. Asking journalists if they know who the accused is certainly isn’t as bad from a reputation standpoint as being duped.

Has the social justice crowd ever heard the story about the boy who cried “wolf”? The worst thing that could happen isn’t that there isn’t really any rape victim here. The worst thing that could happen is that thousands of other rape victims on campuses elsewhere will stop being taken seriously because a Rolling Stone reporter was duped.

It has been touched on already, but I have to commend Soave. He is the one who is treating rape as the heinous crime that it is. His critics are treating it as just another part of their narrative.

If this behavior is part of a pattern as they claim then by deflecting any efforts to identify the perpetrators they are aiding and abetting rapists and assuring that more young women will be victimized in the future. If rape prevention really is their cause then they are doing irreparable damage to it. That isn’t their cause though, is it? They are wrecking their credibility and the credibility of their narrative. I guess that was inevitable. When you rely on ‘fiction to affirm the faith’ as someone else described it, eventually that fiction and thus the faith will collapse.

Jackie’s reaction was “extreme” when Erdely pressed her?meaning that Jackie became so terrified that she reconsidered going public with her story, even anonymously.

There it is. This was all nice and safe. She could go on with her tail of woe and abuse until people started needing to be named. That is when she knew the game was up. She can’t name names because it didn’t happen. If she names them and they fight back and prove it’s a lie, her entire self created world falls down around her.

It does seem to be coming from a worldview that favors collective responsibility.

If the victim shouldn’t be compelled to name the individuals responsible, then we should hold the fraternity system, the school, and American culture at large responsible…

That the ultimate objective of the feminists behind this is to change American culture generally really is central to the story here.

Libertarians keep accusing them of not caring about individual rights, but it’s hard for anybody to hear our criticism over their screaming–about how little they care about individual rights. They don’t seem to care who did it–as long as what was done can be generalized as a fault of the culture.

I blame the culture, too. …especially any part that discourages individual victims from naming the criminals who harmed them. And some of the people who seem to be at the head of the charge to dissuade this woman from having to name her attacker appear to be feminists.

So much of this is causing alarm bells in my head. The ’80s ritual Satanic abuse panic is happening again, except now the presumed-guilty-until-proven-innocent party are young affluent males, who are perhaps the most hated demographic among the SJW crowd.

I hope whatever prosecutor eventually investigates this thinks long and hard about what Mike Nifong did to himself.

I can’t even imagine. The ruined lives left in that scandal’s wake make me want to throw up. I think the only actual abuse that occurred was that confirmed medical psychiatric professionals coaxed children to say such awful things.

I’m a brand new dad and I would curb stomp anybody who tried to hurt my daughter, but I can’t picture myself giving in utterly to mass panic and suborning rationality just yet.

The problem is there is absolutely no corroboration of any of the details of the rape itself. There is no physical evidence because she didn’t go to the hospital. They didn’t get statements from the “friends” who told her not to report it. They don’t have the names of the accused so there is no way to investigate it.

The only thing we know for sure is that “Jackie” exists and that she claims this happened. And that she doesn’t want to tell anyone who did it to her.

By the way, you are entirely right to raise legitimate questions about the story. Feminists should be very concerned about publishing fabricated rape allegations, since they discredit legitimate ones. The “cause” is not helped by sensationalizing fabricated stories.

Exactly. The larger SJW and feminist crowd believes that furthering the narrative is more important than facts; in this case, even pointing out that facts are scarce and no one has really bothered to find out what really happened is tantamount to heresy.

I think the public at large has limited tolerance for this sort of panic and will start tuning out. That hardly furthers the worthy cause of preventing and punishing sexual assault.

Back in school school, a professor selected me to debate a classmate impromptu. Issue: Given that alleged rapists & sex offenders are named publicly (in court filings & media), should their accusers be allowed to remain anonymous? My debate opponent made a credible case that publicizing a defendant’s name was beneficial because additional fact witnesses and even other victims might come forward (hello, Bill Cosby). I replied that (assuming her point) publishing the accuser’s name was equally beneficial because credible witnesses for the defense might come forward to rebut the accusations. My opponent, one of the sharper women in that class, one who eventually made law review & served as a federal circuit court clerk, argued that any benefit derived from publishing the accuser’s name was outweighed by the need to protect her privacy and prevent her public humiliation. When I asked why those factors did not apply with equal force to the defendant, she literally yelled: “Because he’s a rapist!”

My point is that, on this horrible, painful topic, even very smart folks can become emotionally involved and, consequently, can have massive blind spots (myself included I’m sure). Hence, we must cling to the objective facts, not trust assumptions. Acting otherwise butchers justice.

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There is no logical course of action now but for a full investigation to proceed. If one subscribes to the theory that the allegations must be believed, it follows that the perpetrators must be held accountable (tried and if convicted sent to prison) and the administrators who brushed off the allegations disiciplined.

It sounds like the victim has a lot of support. I can’t imagine her wanting to let her attackers get away with what they allegedly did, or her “supporters” wanting them to get a pass either.

When there is a crime THIS serious being alleged, people are going to want to find out who did it and try them. They aren’t just going to let it go because the victim is too traumatized to name them. That’s just crazy. These guys are out there, and their frat is out there, ready to gang rape the next girl for next year’s pledge initiation.

People aren’t going to drop the subject until they find out who these guys are or discover that the story is a fabrication. If she names the guys some facts are going to come out that will contradict her version of the story.

There is a very low likelihood that the original narrative survives intact.

“[A]s The Post’s Erik Wemple noted, sources who were actually named in the article did testify that something happened to Jackie that night.”

That’s not what the source said. She stated Jackie changed at some point. She did not say this happened after a particular party. She says she knows who did this horrible thing to Jackie, but she doesn’t say what the horrible thing is or when it happened.

Rather than pussyfoot around this, I wish everyone would just be honest. This story is fake. The campus rape epidemic, and rape culture in general, is part of liberal mythology now. People are expected to believe something that is plainly untrue (namely that sexual assault runs rampant through our university system) and if they don’t, then they’re identified as outsiders and pariahs to liberals. This is no different than fundamentalist Christians and intelligent design. The story of Jackie is simply a myth – important to liberals not because it is true, but because it confirms their worldview. The story is false.

“At the beginning of the year, she seemed like a normal, happy girl, always with friends. Then her door was closed all the time. We just figured she was out.” Soltis is also quoted this way: “The university ignores the problem to make itself look better. They should have done something in Jackie’s case. Me and several other people know exactly who did this to her. But they want to protect even the people who are doing these horrible things.”

Mr. Soave – you wrote, “Whatever the extent of the campus rape crisis, I am interested in exploring potential solutions, and believe I have pinpointed a major one.”

Should your initial interest be in established WHETHER there is a campus rape crisis?

I have yet to see a single credible study showing that rape occurs on campus more often in relevant age cohort than it does off campus.

If fact, Business Insider ran in 2012 an article titled, “The Most Dangerous Colleges In America” showing that over half the 25 most dangerous colleges for violent crime in the US reported ZERO rapes for any given year from 2008 through 2011.

Rape is never easy to report, but it has never been easier to report. Colleges have never had more support groups, crisis counselors, and rape crisis centers. Police and hospitals have never been better trained in investigating and taking evidence in cases where rape is alleged.

If there is a rape epidemic, where are the statistics showing this? Rape has been in decline since 1992, both off campus and on. Shouldn’t we be figuring out IF there is an epidemic before proposing solutions to an epidemic?

Mr. Soave – you wrote, “Whatever the extent of the campus rape crisis, I am interested in exploring potential solutions, and believe I have pinpointed a major one.”

Shouldn’t your initial interest be in establishing WHETHER there is an actual campus rape crisis? I have yet to see a single credible study showing that rape occurs on campus more often in the relevant age cohort than it does off campus.\

If fact, Business Insider ran in 2012 an article titled, “The Most Dangerous Colleges In America” showing that over half the 25 most dangerous colleges for violent crime in the US reported ZERO rapes for any given year from 2008 through 2011.

Rape is never easy to report, but it has never been easier to report. Colleges have never had more support groups, crisis counselors, and rape crisis centers. Police and hospitals have never been better trained in investigating and taking evidence in cases where rape is alleged.

If there is a rape epidemic, where are the statistics showing this? According to FBI statistics rape (like all violent crime) has been in decline since 1992, and I’ve seen no studies showing the rates of any category of violent crime occurs significantly more often on campus.

Shouldn’t we be figuring out IF there is an epidemic before proposing solutions to an epidemic?